The forecast doesn’t look good for netbooks. Not only are tablets cannibalizing the netbook market, now budget laptops with faster processors and better graphics performance have hit the $400 sweet spot.
But new mobile processing platforms like AMD Fusion and Intel Sandy Bridge offer more power at a lower cost for mainstream laptops, reshaping the industry and threatening the netbook market.
Gateway and Toshiba, for example, both have laptops starting at just under $400 that feature AMD Fusion processors, large 15.6″ screens, high-end graphics support, and other trappings of conventional laptops, such as full-sized keyboards.
Gateway’s three new NV Series notebooks were announced Monday. The most value-priced of the lineup is the NV51B08u, which has a 15.6″ Ultrabright HD widescreen, 1GHz AMD C-50 dual-core processor with integrated ATI Radeon HD 6250 graphics, 3GB DDR3 RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit). It sells for $399.99. Additional models available are priced at $449.99 and $469.99.
Compare these budget notebooks with Dell’s Inspiron Mini 1012 netbook, which has the Intel Atom N450 processor (1.66 GHz) common in netbooks, 1GB DDR2 RAM, a 250GB hard drive, Windows 7 Starter Edition, and a 10.1″ HD widescreen. It costs $449.99 on Dell’s site.
Netbooks still offer a smaller form factor – and thus, better portability – than these new budget laptops. But it’s not hard to imagine in the near future similarly priced laptops with smaller screens using these new mobile processors possibly replacing netbooks altogether.